Sabrina Peckham lived in a homeless camp. She may have been walking from her campsite near the creek in the dark when a 13-foot alligator attacked her from the water. “No one deserves to die like this,” says her daughter Breauna Dorris today after the images of her 41-year-old mother’s body still in the crocodile’s jaws went around the world. The alligator was killed in Largo, Florida. A witness told local media that he saw the alligator in a canal with its lower torso in its mouth. The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office later reported that the animal was killed and a dive team then recovered Peckham’s remains from the canal. The police investigations will have to clarify the circumstances of the woman’s death. It is not yet clear whether she was killed by the reptile, or whether she was already dead when the animal found her. An autopsy will be carried out on her body.

A resident in the area, Jamarcus Bullard, said he was on his way to a job interview when he noticed the alligator with what initially looked like a mannequin in its mouth. “I noticed he had a body in his mouth – like his lower torso – so once I saw it I ran to raise the alarm,” he told local broadcaster Fox 13.

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